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But there is the potential for large sums to be won — and lost — amid fears that “cybersquatters” would cash in on the liberalisation to register hundreds of new web addresses created within each new suffix, and seek to sell them on to companies or organisations that want to claim them.

Big companies already spend millions of pounds buying up web addresses similar to their own to protect their brands. At the other end of the scale, those with money to burn might register their own personal domains.

Would-be applicants are advised that the process is different from registering a regular website. Top-level domains require significant equipment — including servers, routers, and databases — to run. “These new names are not going to be for mom-and-pop businesses,” Dr Twomey said.

Icann said it would begin taking applications for new domains in April, with the first expected to be in operation by the end of 2009. The system is open to anyone, but applicants have to show they have a “business plan and technical capacity”. Disputed domains will be auctioned to the highest bidder, though in some cases intellectual property law may help a company to secure a name. Icann also reserves the right to reject a domain on “morality or public order” grounds, in which case the matter may go to an international arbitration committee.

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One area of dispute will be domain names useful to the sex industry. Icann has in the past rejected the .xxx domain name on the grounds that it would be forced to become a content regulator. Whether .sex or .hot may be now allowed remains unclear.

Asked why registering a domain was so expensive, Dr Twomey said that the fees would cover the $10 million Icann is having to spend developing the domain name system to accommodate new domains and languages.

The largest top-level domain is .com, with 71 million addresses, followed by .de — the country code for Germany — with 11.2 million and .net, with 10.6 million. The fastest-growing is .cn, for China, which has 10.5 million addresses and grew by 31 per cent in the past three months alone.

But most commentators believe the dominance of the .com suffix will make it hard for new domain names to establish themselves. As one blogger put it: “Adding more skimmed milk to the mix will not stop the cream from rising, and that cream is .com.”

Dr Twomey did not expect there to be thousands of applicants, mostly because of the cost, but he said: “We hope there will be a broad range of applications. They key principle is that it is open to all to apply.” He did, however, expect some vanity applications.

Countries that do not use Latin script were very keen to start using their own domain names, he said. Russia has already requested to use the Cyrillic script for the Russian Federation suffix. Such requests will be fast-tracked. But it may take years to establish a full list of country code domain names in local scripts.

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